


marbles

by jillyfae



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Introspection, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2387330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jillyfae/pseuds/jillyfae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baubles or treasures or gifts ... or simply a hint of something bright on a dark day?</p>
            </blockquote>





	marbles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [otterplotter](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=otterplotter).



> for [otterplotter](http://faejilly.tumblr.com/post/98815272658), the winner of a fic from me via [womenofthedas'](http://womenofthedas.tumblr.com/) follower giveaway. Set between Act II and Act III (hopefully obviously)

It had a crack.

Just a tiny one, so small it was almost invisible, for all it was easy to feel catching against the skin when it rolled across your hand.

The inside was exactly the same color as the outside, bright and red and joyful, all the way through. Not just a splash of color on the outside to create an illusion. No dark twists or secrets hiding from view.

Completely honest, that marble. No weights. No cheats.

Just a bit of red glass, rounded and shined and rounded again, just like all the others, until finally it bumped too hard against one of its neighbors, and made itself different.

Not enough to slow it down, not enough to make the smooth steady roll across the floor wobble, not even the smallest shift.

Not enough to see.

But enough to feel, to reach your hand in the pouch without looking, to let glass slip and slide against your knuckles until you felt that tiny edge, and you knew.

_This one._

This one was your favorite.

* * *

 

There were half a dozen blue and green ones, solid or twisted or parti-colored, and those reminded you of the sea and the wind. You liked to take them out, and hold them under the sun, or roll them across a candlelit table, making cool glass waves to echo the shift of the sea and the wind themselves. You could almost feel it, when they bumped together, feel the weight and the power of the waves, and remember the lift of the  _Siren’s Call_ beneath your feet _,_  back when she was yours, and you were free.

Or as free as one could get in this world, at least.

They were pretty, and they made you smile; whether they made you think of the sea, or your ship. Or maybe the way they’d looked when you’d found them, all clinking and pouring out of your boot when you’d picked it up and turned it over, spreading out across your floor like the brightest of puddles.

And you hadn’t even needed a rag to clean them up, just nimble fingers for reaching between the chair and the wall, for of course, they’d rolled just about everywhere.

You wondered how many you’d lost completely to the warped floors of your room. Wondered if Norah was still finding them, whenever a bit of furniture broke, or someone moved out after a night or two and they had to sweep the room out again.

There was a grey one, with a twist of a blue so dark as to be almost black in the middle, like the shadows hiding in the fog, and you liked that one too, liked to cup it in your palm as you put your feet up and drank your ale, as you listened to people talking, or singing, or drinking around you.

You did more of that than you used to, you’d noticed. Just sitting, listening, and waiting.

Not that you could have said what, precisely, you were waiting  _for …_  but it’s not like you had to worry about anyone asking.

No one out here in the world would dare.

You could count the number of people who dared ( ~~who cared?~~ ) on one hand, and they were, all save one, huddled together in the same ugly city of stone and metal and smoke.

You wondered if they were waiting, too.

You wondered  _why_  they were willing. What could be worth it?

Who could be worth …

You wondered how long they’d wait.

If they’d wait long enough.

If you knew how long  _enough_  would be.

You let your silver-blue marble slip from your hand, watched it roll to a dip in the table, circling and circling, slowly getting closer, and closer, until it settled in the little hollow, the firelight warming one side, sparking light on the glass that seemed even brighter for how dark the other side was, lost in its own shadow. The flicker of flames made the shadow move, shift, until it almost looked like two separate marbles nestled together.

You shrugged, and finished your drink, and slipped up to the room you had for the night, closing the door on the stomping of feet and drunken voices singing and shouting and laughing and playing, leaving a bit of glass behind, a grunt caught in the back of your throat as you refused to think about that pull, that one place where, maybe, you wanted to be caught.

But not quite yet.

* * *

 

There was a clear one with a terribly garish combination of orange and purple in the middle; you didn’t even know how they’d managed to make glass that color. Or why. Or especially why  _both at once and trapped together forever._

You considered dropping it, somewhere … off a wall to the cobbles beneath, off a ship to sail and sink on its own, anything to free it from the tasteless curse of its own creation.

But you never did.

Because it wasn’t  _yours,_  not really.

Borrowed or stolen, you weren’t quite sure, but for all you treasured them, the memory of the laugh of the one who’d given them, as bright and tinkling as the sound they made, bouncing gently together in the pouch, they weren’t your treasures.

For all you weren’t yet going to admit it out loud, you knew you were going to give them back.

Going to let the pull of your heart over-ride your sense.

Going to admit you felt that pull, even, that you needed to be free, but you wanted that home port.

That even your thoughts were sailing metaphors.  _Andraste’s stockings,_  that was kind of sad.

Hawke would laugh, though.

Hopefully.

You needed to escape Kirkwall’s chains, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t choose to go and sit for a spell beside them.

So.

You’d take them back. Give Kitten back her shinies, if she wanted them. Make her promise not to put them in your boots again,  _thank you very much_.

Except that red one.

You were going to keep that one. Slide it into your own pouch, let your fingers find it. Let it remind you that scars didn’t have to hurt.

That sometimes,  _sometimes,_  what you saw was really what you got.

All the way through.


End file.
